


Hell and Back

by not_whelmed_yet



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Dratchetparty 2020 (Transformers), Journey into Hell, M/M, Post-War, Rescue Missions, Temporary Character Death, Underworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26609641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: Ratchet goes to hell to fetch back his husband.
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet
Comments: 20
Kudos: 82
Collections: Lynn's Flashfiction & Oneshots





	Hell and Back

**Author's Note:**

> In the continuing adventures of "oh god, this is too much fic to write in one day, oh no, oh no" I give you: this

Ratchet had never taken Drift’s prophecies seriously. It was true that some of them had come true, and that they’d never found a good explanation why, but that didn’t mean he believed Drift was getting visions from the future.

So when Drift had woken him in the night and told him that something bad was going to happen, Ratchet had soothed it away as a nightmare. They’d climbed out of their berth and gone to sit together on the room. It had been the deep of the night and, in their little home out beyond the edge of the city, the stars had seemed so bright they hurt to look at. They’d drank a little, just for the comfort of it, and Ratchet had held him until Drift went back to sleep.

Ratchet had carried Drift back to their berthroom and lay down beside him, the window open just a crack to let in the cool breeze. Ratchet had fallen asleep.

When he woke up, Drift had gone cold.

* * *

There was no reason why Drift had died, no reason that he could find. But sometimes it was like that, the spark just gave out all at once, like a snuffed candle. Ratchet knew he would have to call someone, but they would take the body away and he couldn’t -

He’d always imagined himself dying first, he’d spent his worries on Drift and what he would do without Ratchet. Drift had always been so alive, it was impossible to imagine that he was -

Ratchet sat at their table and looked at the two glasses he’d left, unwashed. He watched the shadows they cast travel across the table as the day slid past. He felt frozen, like a hand locked up by form fatigue. But there was no hammer to shake him loose.

It wasn’t right to say he was waiting. He wasn’t waiting for something. He just couldn’t make himself move.

When the moon had peaked over the hills in the distance Ratchet heard footsteps coming in through the entryway. _So, so…_ that would be First Aid, probably, wondering why Ratchet had missed all his appointments. Or maybe it was Roller, wondering why Ratchet had dismissed all his calls. Or one of his students, worrying about him again…

The person who stepped his kitchen was none of those people. He was a stranger, and Ratchet wondered how he’d gotten through the front door. He had a small frame and wore a cloak dappled with stars and blue spectacles. The moon in the window behind him shone like a crown. The mech smiled, and that smile was horribly weighted with sadness.

“Oh Ratchet, do not abandon hope just yet,” they said. “It is not yet his time.”

They could only be talking about Drift, but it was impossible that they could know. Ratchet hadn’t told anyone. In any case; “What do you mean ‘not his time’? What is that supposed to mean? He’s dead!”

“No, he’s not.” The mech spoke with an authority that unsettled Ratchet. He looked towards to the doorway to the berthroom, shut because he could not bear to look.

“Who are you?” Ratchet asked.

“An old friend.” The mech pulled back a chair and sat down at the table with him. It wasn’t Drift’s chair, which was to Ratchet’s left and which he could have punched the mech if they touched. It was the third chair, which they kept for guests. The golden mech folded his hands on the table and smiled sadly at Ratchet. “You’ve forgotten me, but that’s alright. Everyone does. For now, all you need to know is that Drift is not dead and that I can help you fetch him back.”

There was something uncanny in the mech, a familiarity that he couldn’t deny even though the mech was entirely strange to him. “Who are you?” he asked again.

“I am Primus,” they said, and he knew it to be true. “But you can call me Rung.”

* * *

Primus made him tea and told him a story.

_“After the God War, when Adaptus turned on the rest of the Guiding Hand, I was unable to carry out my duties. I was trapped on Cybertron, and Mortillus - keeper of the Afterspark - was trapped here with me. The dead of the war who had been loyal to me turned out those who had fought on the side of Adaptus. I am grieved that this happened. They were all dear to me, no matter their loyalties. I would have forgiven them, one and all. But I was not there to stop them._

_Unable to receive their rest, the servants of Adaptus...adapted. They forged the Pit, a place of torment, and they planned to drag me down into it. This is the Pit, sometimes called Inferno, of which the Neo-Primalists speak. It is built of the discarded souls of the army of Adaptus, it is inhabited by the same. But it is not a place, it is not real, in the same way that this table is real.”_

Primus rapped on the kitchen table with his knuckles. He took a sip of tea.

_“The Pit is everywhere, and it is nowhere. And since the realities of physical location do not matter to the inhabitants of the Pit, they discovered that they could reach up into this world. They could not trap me in the prison they had built me, but they could do the next best thing - they could steal my friends and worshippers. They could pluck their sparks from their chests and carry their souls down into the Pit to suffer in my stead.”_

“Why haven’t you stopped them?” Ratchet asked. “If you’re Primus, why haven’t you destroyed the Pit?”

“Even if you are Primus, these things take time,” Primus said. “And I have not been aware of who I am for very long at all.”

“But you must have noticed the contradiction in what I’ve told you - how did the myth of the Inferno became part of the Neo-Primalist mythos if the sparks are stolen into a prison from which there is no escape? Well, therein lies the trick. It is not their bodies that are stolen, it is their sparks. And the essence of a spark - well, it isn’t the plasma or the crystal that encases it. It is energy. And if I can find that energy I can, essentially, beam it up to where it belongs. If they pray to me, I can find them. I’d been doing it in my dreams for years.”

“Then why haven’t you brought Drift back?”

“Because Drift has not called out to me,” Primus said. He shook his head. “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding, he has always been loyal to me in the past. I fear that he may believe that he deserves whatever he is facing down there. He’s always been hard on himself.”

They sat at the table together and thought about that, and Ratchet couldn’t deny that it was true. Drift did not pray for himself. He prayed for the health of their friends, for the outcomes of a race they were watching, for the good fortune of strangers they met on the street...he did not ask for favors.

“No, I’m afraid I cannot bring Drift back, not without your help. You must go find him and convince him to pray for rescue so I can restore him to his body.”

And then Primus described exactly how to navigate the Pit, and what he would need to bring with him in order to reach the prison at the center of the labyrinth.

* * *

The world was a monochrome, a smear of grey. He was in a cell, looking down on a world of grey. The air smelled of death, of a waking flashback to the killing fields after the battle of - of so many battles, layered upon one another like a stack of bodies ready to be melted down to slag.

He lay on the cold floor of his cell and was not sure if any of it were real.

At last, a flash of color moved in his peripheral vision. The cell door opened and a body was thrust inside, purple and yellow and familiar.

“Gasket?” He said.

Gasket gaped at him. “Drift?” He shuffled backwards towards the door, as if he were afraid of Drift. “It can’t be you.”

Drift forced himself to his feet, holding his hands up to show he meant no harm. “Gasket, you can’t be here. You’re dead.”

“No, I’m not,” Gasket said. “And I’d like to keep it that way. Don’t touch me.”

Drift could see the fear in Gasket’s optics, and he’d never seen Gasket look at him in fear before. He crept back, shoved himself against the cold wall at the back of the cell. Gasket eventually sat down at the opposite side of the small cell, his back to the bars. He refused to respond to any of Drift’s questions.

Maybe whoever was keeping them here - there had to be a ‘them’ didn’t there - maybe they had threatened Gasket. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to talk to Drift.

But Drift was desperate to touch him, to know that Gasket was real and not a hallucination. He had to be a hallucination, didn’t he? Gasket had died, he couldn’t be in a cell with him. Eventually Drift stopped asking questions and eventually Gasket fell asleep.

Drift crawled forwards, moving as quietly as possible so as not to wake him. He touched his hand to Gasket’s. It was warm. He was real.

Gasket startled awake, drawing back his hand as if he’d been scalded. “No!”

Drift fell back away from him as Gasket held his hand to his chest and sobbed. “I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what he was supposed to be sorry for.

“I told you not to touch me,” Gasket hissed. “You’re dead, Drift! If you touch people, they die!”

Drift finally looked down at himself and realized that Gasket was, truly the only thing with color in the cell. Drift was white-grey as the dead, part of the smear of the landscape.

And as he watched, the color began to fade from Gasket’s frame.

* * *

Ratchet armed himself as Primus had directed, feeling absurd standing in his kitchen with the loop of rope handing at his hip and Drift’s great sword fastened at his back. At Rung’s suggestion he had shuttered his optics - _it makes it easier to let go_. He was trying not to remember that what he was letting go of was his body.

Primus laid his hand over Ratchet’s chest, over his spark. “May you travel safely. Goodbye, Ratchet.” And then the hand was gone and an awful howling wind started up.

Ratchet powered on his optics to find the Pit. The outer wall stood before him, an amalgamation of limbs and helms, like a pile of bodies woven together and crushed into place. It rose at least ten times his height.

Ratchet took off the sword and laid down his supplies. He did not understand how they had come down into the Pit with him, but he knew he would need them on the other side of the wall. First, Ratchet lay down in the ashy dust of the ground outside the Wall and rubbed it onto himself until he looked indistinguishably grey. With any luck, the inhabitants of the Pit would assume he was dead and intended to be there.

Next Ratchet gathered up his supplies and climbed the wall. Some of the hands that stuck out from the wall tried to cling to his ankles as he passed, but he kicked himself free. There was a jagged snarl of twisted metal topping the wall and he struggled over it, cutting his hands and legs in his clumsiness. Drift would have been far better suited to this adventure than he was, he knew. But Drift needed him, so he made it over the top of the wall.

He knotted his rope into a bit of metal that looked solid and not like an identifiable body part, then began his slow descent. From the top of the wall he could see the rest of the Pit. There was a river of oil, forever burning. It snaked around the edge of the Pit. Past the river, there was the labyrinth, and the monster at the entryway. And then, at the center of the labyrinth, there was the prison. That’s where Drift would be.

Ratchet abandoned his rope at the wall and made his way down to the river of fire. It was hot enough to evaporate the fuel in your lines, if Ratchet had been in a physical body that had fuel and not just a spark with the notion that he _ought_ to have a body. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he were to fall into the river, given that his body wasn’t exactly real, but Primus had warned him not to try. Instead, he made his way along the bank until he found the ferry.

The ferry was lounging on the shore, playing a game of dice against himself. When Ratchet hailed him, he paused his game with a mulish frown.

“I have business across the river,” Ratchet said.

“Everyone has business across the river,” the ferry said.

“If you take me across, I’ll give you this,” Ratchet held out a flask of triple distilled engex, which Primus had insisted he take along with him.

The ferry pretended he wasn’t tempted, but his optics had lit up when Ratchet opened the flask and Ratchet knew the attempts at haggling were mostly for show. “You’ll have to drink it before I go, because I’ll need the flask back,” he said.”

“What use do I have for a flask?” The ferry said with a snort. “There’s nothing to fill it with down here.” Ratchet wondered if the ferry had been a person once, or perhaps several persons, but he did not ask any questions as they transformed and let Ratchet ride across to the other side.

On the far shore, the ferry drank the engex and returned the flask to Ratchet. Ratchet waved him off, then lit a bit of rope that he had cut in the fire of the river. He sealed the flame into the empty flask and sealed the lid. This was the part of the plan Ratchet had protested the most - in the real world a sealed flask with a fire inside it would either burn out or explode. Primus had assured him that the fire of the river was not normal fire and that it would stay lit until he needed it.

Ratchet crept across the jagged plain towards the labyrinth. It grew, like something out of a nightmare, in organic chaos. Thorned vines and brambles were interwoven to form walls too thick to cut through, even with Drift’s sword. Ratchet stayed close enough to walk in its shadow, but not so close that he’d be cut on the thorns. He approached the gate and the monster that guarded it.

The monster was asleep. It lay on its side, three heads curled together as they snored. Each head looked like the head of a cyberfox, only one with teeth as large as Ratchet’s arm. Ratchet stepped closer, carefully. He sidestepped to follow one of the great legs up towards the neck, where the collar rested. Clipped to the collar was a ring of keys.

The beast snuffled in sleep and Ratchet froze. He moved again towards the keys, even slower and more silently than before and it grumbled, halfway to wakefulness.

Primus had taken him this far, there was nothing he could do but trust a little more. Ratchet brushed his hand soothingly along the plating of its neck and said in a voice that was mostly terror, “Good boy, Cerbetron.”

The beast snuffled more happily and then settled. Ratchet reached over and unhooked the ring of keys from its collar. He retreated, circling around the side of the beast that _didn't_ have horrible teeth. Ratchet paused when he noticed the chain tethering the beast to the doorway. It wasn’t a real animal - it wasn’t really alive but it seemed wrong to leave it like that. Ratchet used one of the keys on the ring to unlock the chain and lowered it slowly to the ground, then crept further along the outside edge of the labyrinth.

In the myths that Drift liked to read, the hero would have wandered the labyrinth and used their great cleverness to determine the truth path towards the center. Primus had warned him not to try, that the labyrinth was malevolent, shifting to keep intruders trapped outside the prison walls. Ratchet had never had a good sense of direction, so that was mostly a relief. Instead, he uncapped his flask and poured the fire onto the base of the dust-grey brambles.

The wall lit, fire snaking up brambles and vines like a living thing - like the only living thing in this place. The fire roared and Ratchet retreated behind a dip of rock to wait it out. He heard the beast - Cerbetron - howl as the flames reached the gate. Then he saw the creature run out over the plain, dragging its chain behind it.

When Ratchet stood up, the pathway to the prison was a hike over the toasted walls of the labyrinth. He could see movement, at the base of the wall, people of some sort. Primus hadn’t told him what to do with people. Ratchet laid his hand on the hilt of the great sword, then forced himself to relax and walk on.

The people looked less and less like people as he got closer. They looked more like enormous sparklings, no faces, no hands. But as he watched, one of them shifted into a facsimile of Megatron, shocking for its accuracy. The other creatures laughed, as if this was an uproarious joke.

“Oh yes, yes, let’s do that one next!” They didn’t seem to have noticed the fire, or maybe they had noticed it and then forgotten it again.

One of them spotted Ratchet and pointed at him. “Oh, now that is an even better idea!” And all the horrible creatures began to melt into facsimiles of Ratchet. As he watched, some of them even began to manifest color in their frames, muted reds and whites instead of greys.

“We should have done this eons ago,” one of the creatures said. “There is no better torture than one delivered with a _personal_ touch.”

Ratchet had the sword with him because Primus had suggested it might lead him to Drift, if he struggled to find him in the many cells of the prison. He hadn’t suggested Ratchet might need to use it for the more obvious use of a sword.

Ratchet wasn’t a swordsman, not like Drift was. But they had been together a long time, and Drift had shown him how to use a blade. It had taken years of practice before Ratchet could confidently strike against a practice dummy.

He took the horrible creatures by surprise when he drew the great sword. He did not leave any alive to protest the deception.

He stomped into the prison, holding the great sword in front of him liking a divining rod. He didn’t actually expect it to pull him upwards, as if leading him up the stairs. Feeling entirely upside-down at this point, Ratchet followed the magic sword.

It led him all the way to the top and then down a long passageway and then to a locked cell with two bodies in it. Drift was there, looking almost whole, though he had his face pressed to his knees and was sobbing as if his heart was broken. The other body was one he only recognized from Drift’s descriptions - it was Wing. Or, it resembled Wing, lying grey and apparently dead on the floor of the cell.

Ratchet decided not to alert the creature of his presence yet by saying something, instead trying each of the keys on the keyring until he found the one that opened the door.

Drift looked up as the door scraped open and paled. “No,” he whispered. “Not you too.”

“Drift, I promise I won’t hurt you,” Ratchet said. “I’m here to help you.”

“Don’t come any closer,” Drift begged. “Please,”

“I don’t know what those creatures did to you, Drift, but I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“You don’t understand, if I touch you, you’ll die!” Drift shouted, shoving himself to his feet and trying to force himself back further into the corner of the cell. “Don’t, please - ”

Ratchet remembered thinking to himself that since the body he was in wasn’t _actually_ a real body, it wasn’t possible for the fuel in his lines to spontaneously combust. Strange, he certainly felt like he’d been lit on fire from the inside.

Ratchet grabbed the creature wearing Wing’s form by the shoulder and lifted them up so he could draw the sword against their neck. “Shift _now_ or I will destroy you.”

Drift was shouting something at him, probably warning him off desecrating bodies. Under normal circumstances, great advice. Ratchet leaned harder on the sword and “Wing” began thrashing, trying to get away. When that didn’t work, it melted out of Ratchet’s hands, turning into something silver and viscous on the floor.

It slithered past his feet, towards Drift. Ratchet spun and stabbed the greats word into it. There was a flash of blue light, which seemed to burn into his optics after so long staring at grey. When Ratchet lifted the sword free, the creature seemed to have turned to slag.

Ratchet held out his hand to Drift. “Like I said, shapeshifters.”

Drift’s jaw moved, but he didn’t make any noise. Which, fair. He was under a great deal of stress, any reasonable person would be in shock right now. Ratchet offered Drift the sword instead. Drift took the sword. Ratchet tried not to be jealous.

“You’re...dead,” Drift said.

Ratchet looked down at himself. “It’s a long story. I’m not dead, you’re not dead. But I would very much like us to get out of here. Before we find out if Adaptus’s shapeshifting army can reanimate themselves after being turned into stone.”

“If you’re not dead, how are you here?” Drift asked, turning the sword over in his hands, inspecting every inch of it as if to find a sign that it was real. Which it was, but also wasn’t.

“Primus sent me.”

Drift looked at him suspiciously.

Ratchet put his hands up. “No, I swear I’m really me. I know it seems unlikely, but he needed someone to fetch you back and I - I was willing to believe anything, if it could bring you back.”

Drift hugged the sword tight, but didn’t follow Ratchet when he tried to lead him out of the cell. Ratchet sighed.

“Look. All you have to do, and I swear I’m really me even though this sounds absurd, all you have to do is pray. Ask Primus to bring you home. He’ll hear you.”

“But I don’t - ”

It was a reflex. Ratchet saw Drift tuck his chin in and start to deny that he deserved saving and Ratchet stepped forward and wrapped his arms around him. Drift flinched, and Ratchet remembered what he’d said about the horrible game those creatures had been playing, but he didn’t let you. “I don’t care if you deserve it. Do it as a favor to me, Drift. I’m not done having you around yet. Just ask for His help so we can go home together.”

Drift melted into his arms and they stood there for a long moment. Ratchet hugging Drift. Drift hugging a sword. Finally, Drift mumbled something that Ratchet couldn’t understand in Old Cybertronian and faded away.

Ratchet shook his head. “Finally, you stubborn bastard. Primus, if you wouldn’t mind giving me a lift too, while you’re at it?” He wasn't sure if that counted as a prayer, but he could feel something tugging at his spark. While he had Primus’s attention, Ratchet added, “And if you have referrals for any good therapists, I think Drift is going to need one after this. Really the least you could do.”

* * *

There was a piece of paper on the table with a list of names and comm frequencies when Ratchet powered on his optics. Primus was gone, the moon still high in the sky and the front door still open. Ratchet was carrying all of his equipment again, rope and flask at his hips like he was planning on joining a rodeo, the great sword on his back. He didn’t bother to take any of it off, just ran for their room.

Drift was sitting up on the berth, staring at the room as if he’d never seen it before. Or as if he’d never expected to see it again. He saw Ratchet and the dull horror turned, finally, into a smile.

“You look ridiculous,” he said.

“I love you,” Ratchet said. And, for the first time in his life, he thanked Primus without even a hint of sarcasm.

**Author's Note:**

> As always with my one-day fics, there's probably typos and grammar things I missed. This was another 1 day marathon write so eventually I'll go back and edit.
> 
> And as always, I love comments and you can find me online @notwhelmedyet. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed 💕


End file.
